Maximum bitrate of FLAC files

2019-09-05 22:19:14

Sorry if the question is nonsensical, Im quite of a noob in this area Im wondering if FLAC files have a sort of a maximum bitrate? Say 1411kbps? And does that mean that consequently, a file in my music collection of lets say 1600kbps is not FLAC, and can be either WAV or AIFF? I dont use other lossless formats.

Re: Maximum bitrate of FLAC files

And does that mean that consequently, a file in my music collection of lets say 1600kbps is not FLAC, and can be either WAV or AIFF?

Use a media player with a library and a search function (foobar2000 is popular here ...)Then you can search up files by codec (wherein WAV and AIFF would show up as PCM) and format, and you would also find those which have different wordlength/channels/samplerate (cf. m14u's reply).

Unless you have really special needs, there won't be any reason to use WAV or AIFF really.

Re: Maximum bitrate of FLAC files

The max bit rate of FLAC is probably around 36,864 kbps. This is a sample rate of 192 KHz, 24-bits per sample and 8 channels (the absolute max that FLAC will encode). The max size of a FLAC file is limited to around 4 GB and the max uncompressed file the encoder will take is also around 4 GB. Given these things in mind, it's safe to say that most people probably won't ever hit these limits.

and the max uncompressed file the encoder will take is also around 4 GB.

Here there is an yes. AFAIK, there is this 4 GB limitation to WAV, and I couldn't get ffmpeg to produce larger WAV or AIFF files that the reference encoder flac.exe could encode. But I could create larger FLAC files - first with ffmpeg then from that with the reference encoder - I just couldn't feed larger WAV or AIFF to it as source.

Re: Maximum bitrate of FLAC files

The max size of a FLAC file is limited to around 4 GB and the max uncompressed file the encoder will take is also around 4 GB.

FLAC file size is not limited to 4GB. Size of uncompressed source file for encoding to FLAC is not limited to 4GB. *.wav size is of course limited to 4GB, but FLAC can accept stdin (pipe) and *.w64 as input. Of course, if you aren't using ancient version of FLAC.

Re: Maximum bitrate of FLAC files

So the maximum bit rate is probably around 167,770 kbps? That's basically 655,350 Hz sample rate with 32-bit integers per sample and 8 channels. That's very generous indeed. The 4 GB limitation is in fact just a wav file issue. Of course if the maximum sample rate is anything to go by as it looks like a maximum 16-bit value, the maximum bit rate could also be 655,350 kbps as well or if 32-bit you could possibly have a maximum bit rate of 4,294,967,295 kbps‬ or 42,949,672,95‬0 kbps depending how it's defined as I'm not a programmer here.

Realistically at the present the most that I was able to get encoded was a sample rate of 655,350 Hz, 24-bits per sample and 8 channels. The maximum bit rate of FLAC? Not one anyone should worry about as it's probably around 125,827 kbps. For 99% of the world population that doesn't look like anything you need to worry about. If you need to compress 32-bit integers or 32-bit floating point, or something with more than 8 channels then there's WavPack for those truly niche cases at the present.

Re: Maximum bitrate of FLAC files

And does that mean that consequently, a file in my music collection of lets say 1600kbps is not FLAC, and can be either WAV or AIFF? I dont use other lossless formats.

As pointed out, lossless files that you might have gotten through other sources than CD, might be more than 16 bits and higher than 44.1 kHz samplerate (or multichannel!), and so they might clock in at 1600 even if compressed.

But to ask back: what do you need to have answered? Do you have files with the ".flac" extension and wonder whether the extension could possibly be correct, since they have a 1600 bitrate? (If so: you have it answered.) Do you have larger WAV/AIFF files and wonder if they could possibly fit in the FLAC format? (Most often the answer would be yes. Exception: if they are 32-bit. Then, use WavPack.)